Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2010 (NFS11)

What works

Everything from career mode

What does not

Workarounds

What was not tested

Multiplayer mode (servers are closed)

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: AMD
• Driver: open source

Additional Comments

The game switches desktop resolution when launched, but freezes and stays in a black screen. 

You should run Launcher.exe, not NFS11.exe

I can't activate the game.

You have to install via Winetricks "msxml3" to successfully activate the game. 

The game is running slow (10-20 fps).

If you have NVIDIA card, update your video drivers to version 310.x

The message "Controller was not configured ..." appears constantly.

See the corresponding bug report.

I have been running this Game on Many Linux Distributions. In this note I am going to detail all the Challenges I faced and what some best practices are for this GAME under wine. Since I am the maintainer of the Game, I thought that it would be Good to put out some information for the users so that they can choose from some tried and tested Linux Distributions to run this Game under WINE with ATI GRAPHICS CARDS.

I have had most success with the GAME under wine with the WINE series 1.7.XX. Below are some Linux Distributions and how they Game works on each of them.I have used this only on 64 Bit Systems with a 32 bit wine prefix and 64 bit wine prefix both. I recommend using a 32 bit wine prefix.

Some Important things to Consider for Optimum Performance.

1) User a Desktop Environment that does not use COMPIZ.

2) If you have COMPIZ ensure that you are able to Stop it completely and then be able to play the game.

3) Unity Desktop Environment allows for a Gold level performance however you need to play in Windows mode with 800X600 Resolution for best experience. You can never get a Platinum grade performance under Unity Desktop.

4) Use proprietary Graphics Drivers, Open Source Drivers are a hit or miss. I use FGLRX driver for my ATI RADEON HD6450 Card, Though it is and entry level card, This game runs flawless if you use Proprietary Drivers.

5) User a Linux Kernel that has the BFQ Scheduler for Optimum Performance, It does not matter that much for native games, but for WINE it can make things better if not worse. But not a must.Default CFQ scheduler is also good enough

6) Prefer the KDE with Suspend Deskop Effects for Full Screen Windows enabled, or use something else that does disable desktop effects for full screen windows. Or else you can't play full screen.

List of Distributions that Run the Game . With the grade of Gameplay.

1) Gentoo Linux ------Platinum Gameplay

2)Calculate Linux------Platinum Gameplay

3) Arch Linux --------- Platinum Gameplay

4) Manjaro Linux -----------Platinum Gameplay

5) Ubuntu Linux -------------Gold Gameplay

5) Netrunner 14 Ubuntu Base -- Gold Gameplay

6) Elementary OS Freya ---- Platinum Gameplay- Windowed Mode

7) Netrunner Rolling -- Platinum Gameplay.

 These are some of the distributions that Run the Game flawlessly. Unity Desktop environment being the least suited and Gentoo with KDE the best.

So, Not everyone Can install Gentoo and use because it is so freaking tough and time consuming. So here are some of my personal recommendations.

1) If you can't use Gentoo, use Calculate Linux. It has all the goodness of Gentoo with an easy install process. It uses binary packages and not everything is compiled from source. Works great. Has the options to change the Default Scheduler via the Calculate Linux Console. It is 100% based on Gentoo, though it has its own repository AKA, Calculate Linux overlay. All the system tools that Gentoo uses are there and on top of that there are some great Tools built by the Calculate Linux Team which are just awesome. It gives options to boot with the Proprietary Drivers or using the  Open Source drivers for your Card, whether ATI or NVIDIA the drivers are in the DVD. It uses the Latest LTS kernel 3.14 and is a full rolling release Distribution, pretty solid and amazing performance. The best bet after Gentoo itself for running NFSHP under WINE.

2) Netrunner Rolling ;- This is built and based on the Great Manjaro Linux Distribution. Probably the most elegant KDE Distro ever. Smooth Font rendering, Decent set of default applications.100% rolling release. Default BFQ Scheduler. It also has the option to use Proprietary or free drivers at boot and then use the same. MHWD, the Manjaro Hardware manager does an Exellent Job of managing your Graphics drivers. Great distro. Elegant looking, Great performance and One of the best out of the box experiences. All bells and whistles that you might expect out of a user friendly distribution. All codecs, flash etc installed by default. NFSHP runs perfect on this gem of a distribution.

3) Netrunner 14 Ubuntu LTS Base. IT is again same Netrunner but with a rock solid Ubuntu LTS base. Does not provide proprietary graphics drivers by default however once installed, there is the driver manager which can install the proprietary drivers from the REPOS.

WARNING:- WITH THE LATEST OMEGA DRIVER FOR ATI CARDS,there is a bug with causes wine and FGRLX Driver to conflict. There is a bug already for this, Look through the bug report, there is a solution as well. That requires you to first build the driver from the AMD installer that you get from AMD Site, Once built you need to extract the FGLRX core and make some changes and then package the deb and then install. After that it works great.

Other than that This is also a Great choice for running NFSHP under wine.

 My System details.

AMD FX8320 8 core Processor.

ATI HD 6450 1 GB Graphics Card,

120 GB SSD.

I have no idea how this works with NVIDIA Cards, From what I hear NVIDIA Cards are generally considered better than ATI especially in the Linux World. So please feel free to update us with your Experiences on NVIDIA cards.

I hope this helps people running ATI Graphics Cards in choosing the best Linux Distribution for Running NFSHP under WINE.